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Quote by Jeff VanderMeer

Work

Dead Astronauts

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Author

Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is an American writer known for his science fiction and fantasy novels. His works often explore themes of ecology, identity, and the relationship between humans and nature. Born on July 7, 1968, VanderMeer's writing career began in the 1990s. more

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“The principle of human action is the thought of good and evil and thus good and evil. In this, in its principle, lies the infinite difference of human action from animal movement. Perhaps this is not evident when we confine our attention to things done like baking a cake. Not because human action is something other than baking cakes and the like. But because it is not possible to understand what it is to bake a cake without its wider context, as Thompson puts it in a phrase of Anscombe’s. This wider context is thought in thought of the good. And the wider context of human action is infinitely different from that of animal action. For it is not just wider; it is the widest. The context of human action is illimitable. This character of the principle of human action affects its temporality. As its principle is illimitable, so is its temporality. Human action is temporal in such a way as to be all time and eternity. This comes out in the way in which my action is not over when it’s over: I repent, I am punished. My past is my present, which thus is eternity, or hell. And it comes out in the way in which my action may be undone: I confess, I am forgiven. My past is annulled, it is perfectly powerless in my present, which thus is eternity, or heaven.”

ActionEvilForgivenessGood
Author:Sebastian Rödl
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